Hope and Uncertainty Will Reign in 2022

It’s been a year of hope and uncertainty in the states — and the prospect is for more of the same in 2022.

Hope has been spurred by the economic rebound: sales tax revenues swelled as Americans bought taxable items at pre-pandemic levels while also boosting personal savings rates and inflation.

Hope also came from Congress, which after a series of false starts provided state, local, territorial and tribal governments with $350 billion as part of President Joe Biden’s American Rescue plan.

State Budgets Good, But Uncertainty Remains

Despite this economic cushion, uncertainty prevailed in most states as the COVID-19 pandemic surged, topping 50 million cases and more than 800,000 deaths in the United States alone.

Most of the current COVID suffering has been caused by the potent Delta variant, but the spread of the new and highly transmissible Omnicom variant has added to the uncertainty and threatened lockdowns and other inconveniences.

Delta has disrupted demand, prolonged supply bottlenecks and negatively impacted housing starts, said Lael Brainard, the vice-chair of the Federal Reserve.

National inflation ballooned to 6.8 percent in November, the highest rate since 1982.

Economists say that inflation, in which too much money chases too few goods, is a byproduct of the pandemic.

With restaurants and other public places shuttered and people working from home, demand for services declined while demand for products increased.

As an example, movie and theater revenues all but vanished during the pandemic while demand for home entertainment centers increased.

Clogged supply lines, factory shutdowns abroad and a shortage of truck drivers made goods scarce and therefore more expensive.

The future is viewed through partisan lenses: President Biden insists the inflation spurt has peaked, while Republicans predict it will be of long duration. No one really knows.

Voting and the Rule of Law

Economic uncertainty is mirrored by political uncertainty, as states prepare for the midterm elections of 2022 under a cloud of hyper-partisanship and controversial redistrictings of congressional and state legislative districts.

Nineteen states controlled by Republicans have made it more difficult to vote, while 25 mostly Democratic-controlled states have eased voting restrictions, according to data compiled by the Brennan Center for Justice. 

Politicians on both sides in these states accepted the conventional wisdom that heavy voter turnout inevitably favors Democrats.

After they won the governorship and legislative control in 2019, Virginia Democrats repealed the state’s voter ID law, allowed 45 days of absentee voting, made Election Day a state holiday and automatically registered anyone receiving a driver’s license.

These actions were supposed to increase turnout, and they did. Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate, received 200,000 more votes than Democrat Ralph Northam did when he was elected governor of Virginia by a landslide in 2017.

But McAuliffe lost the election to Republican Glenn Youngkin because GOP turnout increased even more than Democratic turnout.

The result vindicated demographer Nate Cohn, whose evaluation of state voting laws in the New York Times was quoted in my August column.

“There’s a real — and bipartisan — misunderstanding about whether making it easier or harder to vote, especially by mail, has a significant effect on turnout or electoral outcomes,” Cohn wrote. “The evidence suggests it does not.”

Rough Road Ahead for Dems?

Virginia and New Jersey were the only states to hold gubernatorial elections in 2021, and the results augur well for Republicans.

Although New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy (D) won a second term, his margin of victory was three percentage points in a state that Joe Biden won by nearly 16 percent in 2020.

In Virginia, Republicans won the House of Delegates, as the lower legislative house is known, as well as the governorship.

Republicans now control 67 of the 99 partisan state legislative chambers with Democrats holding 31. A multi-party coalition shares power in Alaska.

History favors Republicans in the 2022 congressional elections as they try to wrest control of the U.S. House and the Senate from the Democrats. 

Since 1934, the party out of power in the White House has gained an average of 28 seats in the House, winning 19 of 22 midterm elections. Democrats presently hold the House by eight seats.

The historical portent is not quite as strong in the Senate, where the party out of power has prevailed two-thirds of the time. The Senate is now tied 50-50.

State legislatures have been redistricting House seats based on the 2020 census. Nineteen states have drawn new maps so far, and six states do not have to draw them because they have only a single representative.

Surprisingly, according to the data-driven demographic website FiveThirtyEight, Democrats have picked up six seats to two for Republicans.

The website said Republicans “pulled their punches” in Indiana, where they passed up the chance to convert the Democratic-leaning 1st district into a Republican district and in Iowa, “where they could have overridden the state’s nonpartisan redistricting agency to draw more solidly red seats and didn’t.”

At the same time, Democrats “used hardball tactics” to push through a map in Oregon adding two Democratic seats and in Illinois, where they increased Democratic-leaning seats from 11 to 13 despite losing a seat in the census.

But Republicans can take over the House by maintaining the status quo, including states where they created lopsided districts in 2011.

Take Ohio, where Republicans hold a 12-4 edge in the House, meaning they hold 75 percent of the districts in a state where Republicans typically receive 54 percent of the congressional vote.

After a new Ohio Redistricting Commission failed to come up with a bipartisan map the Republican-controlled Ohio legislature quickly drew and passed a map that maintains the GOP’s partisan dominance.

Ohio lost a seat in the 2010 census, and the new map favors Republicans by either a 12-3 or 11-4 margin, depending on the analysis.

The Ohio map is being challenged in court as is the map in North Carolina, which was gerrymandered to favor Republicans in 2011 and again this year.

Reformers who prefer competitive elections have made some progress, notably in California, a Democratic state where an independent commission draws the maps.

Democrats hold a 42-11 edge in the Golden State’s congressional delegation, but the commission has drawn several competitive districts, enabling Republicans to gain four seats in 2020 even as Biden was defeating Donald Trump in California by more than five million votes.

Bipartisanship Isn’t Dead

Aside from partisan redistricting, state legislatures achieved worthwhile accomplishments in 2021.

Several states and cities enacted modest police reform measures in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, but the calls for defunding the police diminished as homicides rose throughout the land.

Reflecting the changing times, 22 states passed laws enabling telemedicine, and a number also expanded broadband access.

Here are a few examples of constructive legislation provided by Kate Blackman and others at the National Council of State Legislatures (NCSL):

- The Democratic-controlled legislature in Illinois passed legislation providing tax credits for the manufacturers of electric vehicles (EV) and paying the costs of training new or retained employees. The state is home to EV manufacturer Rivian.

- The Republican-controlled legislature in Georgia enacted legislation protecting consumers against balance billing and the surprise medical bills associated with this practice.

- The Democratic-controlled legislature in Vermont vastly improved access to child care. Families with income up to 150 percent of poverty will receive free child care; those with incomes up to 350 percent of poverty are eligible for a state subsidy.

- In Colorado, legislation sponsored by two Democrats and two Republicans provides up to three state-paid mental health sessions for all Colorado youth.

All of these measures had near-unanimous bipartisan support.

And Then We Came to the End

This is my last column for State Net Capitol Journal, as I’m retiring at the age of 88 to write my memoirs. I’ve been associated with this newsletter and its predecessor California Journal since that magazine’s first issue in January 1970. I thank my editor Rich Ehisen and my colleagues Korey Clark and Mary Anne Peck and you, dear readers, for the support you’ve provided. I also thank those who have kept me informed about state issues, especially Tim Storey and Wendy Underhill of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

State Net Capitol Journal is resolutely nonpartisan. That suits me, as I much prefer explanation to ideology and try always to rely on facts. One hundred years ago, the great journalist C.P. Scott wrote: “Comment is free, but facts are sacred.” His point was that anyone can have an opinion but that it’s sometimes challenging to learn the facts.

The Constitution of the United States, wonderful as it is, rests on certain unstated premises without which a functioning democracy could not long endure. One of these premises is that the loser of an election concedes to the winner.

Richard Nixon in 1960 and Al Gore in 2000 had reason to believe they might have won the presidential elections in which they competed. But the count and the courts said otherwise, and they graciously conceded to John F. Kennedy and George W. Bush, respectively.

Like it or not, Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. That’s a fact.

-- By Lou Cannon

There is an old saying that goes like this: “Don’t cry because it's over, smile because it happened.”  

It’s oft-credited to Ted Geisel (a.k.a. Dr. Seuss), though there is no evidence he ever said it, and as Lou Cannon notes in this week's Spotlight, it’s the facts that matter. Regardless, it is an apt intro for myself and SNCJ Associate Editor Korey Clark to share our thoughts on the retirement of our dear friend and colleague Lou. 

You Can’t Retire from Being Great

I’ve had the honor and pleasure of working with Lou Cannon for over a decade and of knowing him practically my entire life. I still have vivid memories of visiting D.C. with my family as a kid and Lou showing us around his digs at The Post.

Lou possesses the wisdom I imagine comes naturally to someone who’s spent a lifetime asking good questions and listening carefully enough to the answers to be able to clearly communicate them to others. At the same time, he doesn’t fit the stereotype of the jaded, cynical career journalist. He’s always been respectful and optimistic, always appealing to the better natures of those wielding the levers of power.

Lou’s direct contribution to the Cap J in the form of a monthly column made it a better publication. Each column was an education, providing as much breadth and depth on its subject -- including illuminating historical context -- as the word limit would allow, while still remaining immensely readable.

As a colleague, Lou has been a constant source of support, encouragement and sage advice, with an instructive anecdote always at the ready. He’s also been quick both to acknowledge his own (very rare) mistakes and praise the good work of others. In all the years I’ve worked with him, he’s never missed a deadline even when it seemed physically impossible not to. And I think it’s safe to say that the example Lou set for professionalism, integrity and grace made all of us who’ve been fortunate enough to work with him want to be more like him.

As a family friend, I’ve only known Lou to be caring, jovial, full of great stories and generally just fun to be around. And although my professional relationship with him may be coming to an end, the personal one, I hope, will continue for a long time to come.

-– Korey Clark

Today is a bittersweet one for us here at the Journal. For while I am always happy to see the latest story from my colleague and friend Lou Cannon pop up in my inbox, I’m sorry to say it will be the last one.

As you might have read in his Spotlight story, Lou is stepping away from the grind of writing a monthly column to focus on finishing his memoirs. And if anyone should share the story of his life’s work, it is Lou Cannon.

For more than 60 years Lou has reported on governors and presidents and every kind of related political animal, starting with covering California Gov. Pat Brown (yes, Jerry’s dad) for the San Jose Mercury News in the early 1960s, followed by decades covering the White House for the Washington Post. He was later the paper’s L.A. bureau chief for another decade.

He has also written numerous books, including several on Ronald Reagan that are considered among the best ever written. The same can be said of Official Negligence, his book on the 1992 Los Angeles riots sparked by a videotaped beating by L.A. police of a Black man named Rodney King. One of the key voices to come out of that tome: current U.S. House Representative and L.A. mayoral candidate Karen Bass. 

And Lou was of course there for the start of the California Journal, the late great political magazine that for more than 35 years was the go-to source to learn what was really happening inside Golden State politics. His keen insights and always stellar reporting – by then from Washington D.C. – helped make the Journal can’t miss reading for political junkies coast to coast.

I met Lou under less than fortunate circumstances. I came on to the State Net Capitol Journal as an associate editor for then-SNCJ editor Melanie Smith, who was battling an aggressive form of *** cancer. I looked up one day to see Lou standing at the entry to my cube, asking to speak with me. It didn’t take long for me to figure out he was assessing me, though not for my journalistic skills. He wanted to be sure I was going to hold up my end supporting Melanie.

Almost 20 years later, I can attest that the concern he showed that day for her well-being was not a one-off. For as good as Lou Cannon is as a reporter, he is an even better human. He is unfailingly kind and considerate, supportive at all times of his colleagues, and a paragon of integrity in work and in life. He cares about his stories, and he cares deeply about people.

Lou is also the consummate professional. Through fires, floods, landslides, personal tragedy and health issues, Lou has never missed a single deadline with this publication. Not one. And not for lack of opportunity – I offered to relieve him on several occasions when circumstances would have driven most reporters to the sidelines. He always refused, and he always delivered. He is in his own way our Lou Gehrig, our Cal Ripken Jr.

As always, Lou kept his comments on his departure short and concise, and with as little fanfare as possible. While some might have been tempted to make the final column of a long and storied career all about himself, Lou did just the opposite, reporting the story at hand and making only a brief mention of his departure a few graphs from the closing.

That is Lou Cannon in a nutshell – a true “just the facts” newsman to the very end. And while I’ll miss him being around on the regular – and will do my best to leave him be so he can finish that memoir – I am beyond grateful to have spent these last many years in his presence. He has been a terrific colleague, an invaluable mentor and, most of all, a true friend.

Best of luck, Lou!

-- SNCJ Managing Editor RICH EHISEN

Half of States Have Completed Congressional Redistricting

Twenty-five states have completed congressional redistricting based on the 2020 census (including the six states that didn’t have to draw new maps because they have only one congressional representative), according to a tracker maintained by the political analysis website FiveThirtyEight. New maps have also been proposed in another 18 states.